Mar 1985
The Jericho Imbroglio!
by Marv Wolfman, Rich Buckler, Bob Smith, Ben Oda, Adrienne Roy
The Teen Titans (Nightwing, Cyborg, Starfire, Changeling, Jericho, Lilith) get some publicity after they take down some “gun runners”. Adeline Wilson, Jericho’s mother, gets targeted by the president of Qurac. He hires Cheshire to kidnap Adeline. The Quraci intelligence agency has tracked her down through her ties to the Teen Titans, thanks in part of a newspaper article written about them in the wake of their recent tussle with arms merchants. Cheshire is happy to take the mission.
Cheshire strikes. She kills Adeline’s assistant and knocks Adeline out after scratching her with her poison-tipped nails. Jericho shows up before Cheshire can escape but he proves to be no match for her. She knocks him out and leaves with his mother’s unconscious body.
Nightwing gets information about Jericho from the Pentagon which indicates that he may be a traitor. He shares it with Changeling who confronts Jericho. Changeling assumes the worst and attacks Jericho but Joseph Wilson overpowers Garfield Logan. He knocks his green teammate out and then goes on the run.
Nightwing, Starfire, Cyborg, and Lilith ask Changeling about what happened with Jericho. Changeling starts rambling and insists that Jericho attacked him, even though it didn’t happen that way. The others are suspicious of their teammate’s story.
Cheshire threatens to torture Adeline. She wants to learn everything that Jericho’s mother knows about the Teen Titans.
A team of archaeologists from Science Technology and Research (S.T.A.R.) find what looks like a spaceship frozen in a block of ice in a cave in northern Alaska. They start to thaw it out.
Notes
Lilith first appeared in Teen Titans (1966) 25 (Feb 1970) and was a regular in that book through issue 52 (Dec 1977), the next to last issue of the series. She made a flashback appearance in Tales of the New Teen Titans (1982) 3, but her first real appearance since 1977 was in Tales of the Teen Titans (1984) 49. She is an orphan and her superpower is precognition.
Thoughts
There is a full page add for what at the time was billed as DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths. I don’t recall ever seeing this image before or that logo. I was aware from Marv’s comments in the letters pages of previous issues that he was working on something that was originally titled History of the DC Universe but that was eventually called Crisis on Infinite Earths.
George Perez is still credited as co-creator and co-editor but the only artwork of his is on the cover. The colors in the trade paperback collection are brighter but I think I prefer the colors in the original issue.
I’m now into new territory for me. I’m fairly certain that I’ve never read the remaining issues of Tales of the Teen Titans. I’m not sure what to expect but my hopes aren’t overinflated because Perez had been replaced by other artists. He drew the first story in the New Teen Titans (1984) but after that he moved on to work on Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) and then Wonder Woman (1987). He returned to pencil one more arc 50 issues in to the 1984 series but I think that’s about it for Perez work on Teen Titans.
I like what I see so far. Changeling needs to work out his issues. He’s going to be harmful to his teammates until he does so.
I think I know where the bit with the archaeologists is going but I don’t know for sure.
I don’t know all the little details but I know the broader brush strokes that are coming up based on the covers I have seen.
Meanwhile…
Dick Giordano continues to write about what a typical day is like for him. This is part 2, the previous installment was in the column from a few months back. He spends about half the column talking about how “great” his commute is. He also mentions a couple upcoming series from DC Comics. One will be written by Alan Moore, drawn by Dave Gibbons and was tentatively titled Watchman. The other is a nameless project by Frank Miller about one of the most popular superheroes.
The Tower
Two full pages of letters from fans and responses from Marv. A couple of the letters express sorrow over the death of Terra. Michael Eury writes in with his thoughts about issue 46 (Aqualad, Aquagirl, HIVE) and then riffs on the reveal that Vic’s grandparents call him Corky. He goes so far as to suggest that the Teen Titans should all have nicknames name that sound like names from Our Gang/The Little Rascals.
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